right so carrying on :
i have a real mess up here, proper step back:
once the body was blasted i decided to start chopping the wind-shield frame to fit into the aperture, i bit of a curse word job at the best of times but so be it. being the state of the car it was all pretty square, although once i go the frame in i noticed quite large gaps on the top corners :
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i.imgur.com/HBEE6A2.jpg[/img
now for some unknown reason looking back, maybe rushing maybe lack of patience i don't know ( weve all been there) i decided to slice the a pillars and bring them forward to meet the screen tops, thinking it was a fault with the chop that was once done, again i don't really know why i done this. but once finished i was never really happy with its look or how everything sat :
as you can see it didnt look right, maybe time not being on my side at the time i though " that will do" not knowing it was going to cause me a nightmare in the near future.
while i was making a pigs ear of the body, i decided to finish the frame, this meant fully welding everything that was temporary, getting it 100% true and square but also little things like brake pipe clips, holes for tucked wiring and passageways for routing things, my pet hate on hotrods or any custom cars is too much wiring on show so i wanted everything to dissapear into the frame rails then come into the cab from underneath. a lot to think about. before it goes into paint as you don't want to be doing too much after! also threaded bungs for pedals, shocks, master cylinder ect ect alot of time spent on this car and its the finishes that make the difference
i still had the disposal of a blast booth at the workshop but with the chassis being so big and heavy i decided to ship it out to a local place, jacksons shotblasters. these guys fully blasted the chassis, then dipped it before finishing it in epoxy primer ready for sanding. top job and great price too
then back:
very happy with the results!
turning my attention back to the body now, roof time!
i had heard that volvo saloon roof skins were a real good shape for a model a pickup so off to a volvo breakers i went ( that real creepy huge one by peterborough) i have myself a roof skin , laying on and it doesnt look too bad : i can work with that..
so i decide to weld it in, again very slowly to keep it flat..
HERE COMES THE FCUK UP!
the eagle eyed amongst you will notice that the side panels are waayy out of line, there is a huge gap the is on the front edges. thats nothing i couldn't sort tbh. but something just didnt look right, AT ALL..
for some reason i made some infill pieces and just plodded on, the roof was FULLY welded on...
after trying the doors on it was clear it wasnt right, the side panels were all over the place and also that infill panel i put in would have needed a huge amount of filler to get anywhere close. i just couldnt work out what had gone wrong and why it was so so far out. after a few days off, and another look i realised that 20 mm a pillar move had pushed the whole car out of line.. ive done a little sketch to show roughly what i mean :
there was really only one thing to do it i wanted this car to come out the way i indented. cut the flipping lot out and do it right..
after some help from an american model a forum and some past photos it turned out the reason the frame didn't sit right in the car was because it was slouching forward, it was missing a support panel in the roof. looking back it was bloody obvious but at the time sometimes you just don't see i guess. this mean more work but at least i knew what to do, roof back off, and put those a pillars back to stock. not going to lie this job broke me.... i had put ALOT of time into this car and i owed my mrs alot for the support, to then have to cut a summers work back off was a nightmare, but necessary.
i didnt take many photos of this but basically the next month or so was intense, carefully dissecting every weld and panel, to make it right once and for all. i ended up bringing the car home over xmas to crack in if i got a spare hour at home. after some very intense few weeks all the metalwork was nearly wrapped up! NEVER AGAIN! i dread to think how m,any hours was in this..
from this :
to this :
just by looking at those pictures it looks a million times better!
more to follow thanks for looking
